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Chapter 11
Augustine: philosopher, theologian,
and church father
Questions to be addressed in this
chapter
1. Why did Augustine become a Manichee and a Skeptic?
2. In what ways did Greek thinkers inspire Augustine’s thought
about the Christian faith?
3. How did Augustine’s reaction to the Donatist controversy
affect the way Christians thought about the nature of the
Church and the sacraments?
4. What was Pelagianism, and how did Augustine’s response to
it influence Christian understandings of sin, grace, and
predestination?
The Early Augustine:
philosopher and skeptic
• Augustine was born in 354 CE and reared in Tagaste, a town in
North Africa (now Souk Ahras in Algeria).
• At the age of nineteen, Augustine joined the religious sect of
Manichaeism.
• The Manichaean sect emphasized reason, rational
explanation, and a life focused on ascetic practices.
• This solution satisfied Augustine for a time, but ultimately the
Manichaean system began unraveling in his mind.
• Augustine gave up his faith in Manichaeism, moved to Rome,
and became a philosophical Skeptic.
The Later Augustine: Christian
theologian and Church father
• Through reading the works of the Neoplatonists, Augustine
eventually abandoned Skepticism when he came to believe that
human reason can attain knowledge—even certain knowledge—
about some fundamental truths.
• In working through the Neoplatonic writings, Augustine also
found solutions to some of the intellectual challenges that
bedeviled him as a Manichean.
• In 384, Augustine was appointed Professor of Rhetoric in Milan.
While there, he encountered the city’s bishop, Ambrose, an
eloquent orator and brilliant theologian.
• In 386, at age 32, Augustine became a convert to Christianity.
• In 396 Augustine was made Bishop of Hippo (a post he held until
his death in 430).
The Church and the Sacraments
• Beginning in 303 CE, the Roman emperor, Diocletian (284-313),
began a series of persecutions against the Christians, perhaps as
one way of unifying the Empire.
• These persecutions were most emphatic from 303-305, but they
continued on to a lesser degree until the Edict of Milan in 313.
• After these persecutions ended, concerns arose about what to do
with those bishops—referred to as traditores—who had turned
over the sacred Scriptures to the authorities.
• Donatus and his followers (referred to as the Donatists) disagreed
with broad catholic teaching about the Church and the Sacraments.
They maintained that a bishop who had lapsed (had turned over
the Scriptures to the magistrates, for example, or who had
committed some other significant malfeasance) committed
apostasy and was no longer capable of administering the
sacraments.
• The catholics, on the other hand (and this would include the leaders
in Rome), maintained that if a lapsed bishop repented, he would be
able to continue administering the sacraments.
Human nature, sin, grace,
and predestination
• A second controversy which erupted during Augustine’s tenure as
bishop, also significant in the history of Western Christian
thought, was Pelagianism.
• As Pelagius (c.354-c.420) understood Augustine, he afforded no
place in his theology for human will, or effort, or participation in
the acts of God.
• Pelagius and Augustine were agreed on the importance of
human free will, but while Augustine also strongly affirmed the
necessity of God’s sovereignty, Pelagius believed this doctrine
undermined both human will and moral responsibility.
• For Augustine, sin had so corrupted human nature and will that
our disposition, even at birth, is toward evil, and we are in need
of God’s grace both to understand sin’s effects and to overcome
them and turn to God.
Manichaeanism
Pelagianism
Augustinianism
Absolute sovereignty of God
Denied absolute sovereignty
Absolute sovereignty of God
of God
Denied human free will
Total freedom of human will Freedom of human will
Summary of main points
1. Augustine sought sophisticated, philosophical answers to
fundamental questions about God and human nature, and this led
him first to Manicheanism and then to academic Skepticism.
2. By incorporating ideas of Greek thinkers, primarily the
Neoplatonists, Augustine overcame his skepticism and acquired
philosophical tools which he used to understand and defend
orthodox Christian faith.
3. In responding to the Donatists, Augustine developed a distinction
between the visible and invisible Church and a view of the
sacraments in which they are causally efficacious because of the
moral purity of Christ rather than the one administering them.
4. Through his responses to Pelagianism—the view that the sin of
Adam and Eve did not corrupt human nature and that the human
will is capable of following God—Augustine developed the ideas of
original sin, the unification of divine sovereignty and human free
will, and the predestination of the elect.